The poker game is still gaining its popularity all around the globe. There’re so many people which love spending their time at the poker table, and feel this excitement inside. Of course, with rising popularity of the game, casino owners have decided to throw poker tournaments, where everyone can show their skills and win money. Literally, poker tournaments are special events where players gather and play different kinds of poker games (sometimes there’re more than 50 different types of poker offered). These tournaments can be held whether online or offline and can be either closed or opened. If to talk about the online casinos, they hold different tournaments almost every day, so it’s not a problem to find them, if you want to take part in such events. And what is even more exciting, you can play and chat with players from different countries at the same time. Of course the most prestigious poker events are held in fabulous city of Las Vegas, with real players, real tables, real chips and what is the most important part of it – the real human emotions. They are – World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker. The prizes there are huge there and if you win, you will be considered the poker celebrity. Among other prestigious poker tournaments, we can name – European Poker Tour, World Series of Poker Europe, Asia Pacific Poker Tour, Latin American Poker Tour, Crown Australian Poker Championship (Aussie millions) and others.

Depending on the level of the tournament, player has to pay the buy-in, which is mostly not that high, but of course, if we’re talking about the professional tournaments, there it can reach the big numbers. For example, if you want to join the World Poker Tour, the pay in there may vary from 2,500 to 25,000 USD. And the buy-in in the World Series of Poker in the 2012 has been 1 000 000 USD, but it should be mentioned that 11% from the each buy-in ($111,111) has been donated to the One Drop Foundation, which fights poverty all over the world.

Knock-out format is the most widely used on the different tournaments. If a person loses he/she can’t continue to play, and at the end there’re only the best of the best left, and players are moved between tables after every game, in order to avoid having the empty tables ( if there’re no players left at the table, the tables will be closed). In some tournaments, there’s a rebuy option available, so that knocked-out players can be back to the game, but only if they pay a certain amount of money, but this option can be used only once.

Another popular format of poker tournaments is called – “shootout”. The whole point is that the play is divided into rounds, and people play at one table till they know the only one winner, and after that the winner from each table proceeds playing at the final stage.

There’re many poker tournaments, which one can join and get the unforgettable experience while enjoying the game, which is one the most popular in the world.

Poker is a microcosm of all we admire and disdain about capitalism and democracy. Poker can be rough-hewn or polished, warm or cold, charitable and caring, or hard and impersonal, fickle and elusive, but ultimately poker is fair, and right, and just.Lou Krieger